$337 Billion Stealth Jet Not So Stealthy: Report

One of the main arguments for the military’s $337 billion Joint Strike Fighter program is that the F-35 jet is stealthy — and so it can’t be seen by next-generation air defenses. But a new study, published by Air Power Australia, undermines that most basic rationale. According to the report, the F-35 is not as stealthy as the Pentagon and manufacturer Lockheed Martin claim, mostly due to recent changes in the aircraft’s shape.

The Australian group has been pushing for the island nation to try and purchase the more advanced — but way more expensive — F-22s, instead of Joint Strike Fighters. According to report author Carlo Kopp, the F-35 is "demonstrably not a true stealth aircraft" like the
F-22, B-2 and new-retired F-117. That’s because the production version of the new aircraft has what aviation guru Bill Sweetman calls "some very conventional-airplane-shaped lumps and bumps around its underside, not to mention the hideous wart that covers the gun on the F-35A."

After all, Sweetman points out in a post at Ares, "the doctrine laid down by stealth pioneer Denys Overholser still stands:
the four most important aspects of stealth are shape, shape, shape and materials." And the F-35’s current shape is nothing like the flat and faceted shapes of past, and future, stealth aircraft.

The Pentagon lately has characterized the F-35 as "interchangeable" with the larger F-22 — and Lockheed has said that the F-35, using "advanced stealth," can destroy the most advanced air and land targets "all before the F-35
is ever detected." On the basis of this assertion, the Pentagon is preparing to end F-22 production at probably around 230 airplanes, and accelerate purchases of up to 2,400 F-35s.

But Kopp’s report posits that the F-35 isn’t stealthy enough to operate alone against the latest Russian-made air defenses. Instead, the "stealth" fighter will have to rely on other aircraft — bomb-carrying F-22s or other fighters firing radar-seeking missiles — to destroy air defenses before it can move in to attack targets.

That option could be best labeled as “shooting a path through defenses”, which is essentially the “conventional” model pioneered and perfected during the Vietnam conflict and incrementally improved since then.

"The APA team does have an open agenda (as does the JSF team) but that does not mean that their data is bad," Sweetman stresses. "The analysis is crude insofar as it doesn’t make any detailed estimates of the effects of radar absorbent material (RAM)."

But shape is more important than RAM, Sweetman says, and the F-35’s shape means it’s more like an F-16 than an F-22, except when it comes to price.